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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Woowa Brothers

South Korea: Shinhwa Food Group to Use Woowa Bros. Dilly Plate Server Robots

The Shinhwa Food Group will be rolling out server robots at its restaurants brands in South Korea thanks to a new deal with Woowa Brothers. Aju Business Daily reported yesterday that Shinhwa has agreed to gradually introduce roughly 100 “Dilly Plate” server robots at its restaurants by the end of this year.

Dilly Plates are basically self-driving racks of trays that shuttle plates of food and empty dishes back and forth from a restaurant’s kitchen to its tables. The robots are equipped with sensors and smarts to do things like avoid obstacles and other people. Woowa debuted its first Dilly Plate (made by Bear Robotics, shown in the picture above) at a Seoul Pizza Hut back in 2018. According to the Aju Business Daily, Woowa now has five different Dilly Plate models that are deployed across 305 restaurants in South Korea. Woowa’s deal with Shinhwa is the biggest deployment agreement so far.

Interest in food robotics has accelerated since the pandemic last year. The use of a robot such as the Dilly Plate can reduce the amount of human-to-human contact in a restaurant by removing a human from the equation. Robots can also alleviate some of the hard work associated with being server by carrying heavy loads back and forth continuously without needing a break.

Woowa Brothers has been working on a number of different food robot-related initiatives. The company launched its food delivery robot program last year, and is even working with companies like Hyundai that allow those delivery robots to do things like autonomously access buildings and ride elevators. Additionally, Woowa worked with South Korean electronics giant LG and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement to develop its server bots.

A Woowa Brothers rep told Aju Business Daily that server robots are just the beginning of the company’s automation ambitions. Other plans include developing cooking robots and packaging robots that use artificial intelligence.

South Korea: Hyundai and Woowa Brothers Partner for Delivery Robots

Hyundai Motors and Woowa Brothers announced this past weekend that they are partnering to develop last-mile food delivery robots.

Woowa Brothers, which operates the popular Baedal Minjok food delivery service in South Korea, launched its robot program last summer, making deliveries to Gwanggyo Alley Way, a housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city.

According to the Korean Economic Daily, the Woowa and Hyundai signed a Memorandum of Understanding last Friday outlining two phases of development. The first will have robots autonomously taking deliveries from the entrance of a residential building to an apartment’s front door. (Presumably a human delivery driver would bring the order from the restaurant to the robot.) Later on, the two companies will work on robots that can autonomously make the entire journey from a restaurant or delivery hub to a customer’s home.

This agreement appears to build on a relationship that Woowa and Hyundai Elevator entered into last year. The two companies were also working with networking development platform HDC-I Controls to develop robots capable of gaining access to a secure building and autonomously riding an elevator once inside.

The global pandemic has spurred interest in contactless delivery, and a number autonomous robot delivery services have launched around the world. In Russia, Yandex is making robot food deliveries in Moscow. In Turkey, both Delivers AI and Bizero are doing robot delivery. And here in the U.S., there are a number of delivery robot players including Starship, Kiwibot and Refraction AI.

Woowa’s partnership with Hyundai, however, is exciting because we’re starting to see what happens when you connect various automated services together to create a truly autonomous last mile. Elsewhere in South Korea, LG is using its robots to make deliveries from a convenience store to the LG Science Park. Once inside, the the LG robot can ride the elevator and navigate between different floors to make deliveries.

If you are interested in the future of robot delivery, be sure to attend our ArticulATE virtual conference on May 18. It will bring together all the best thought leaders in the food robotics and automation space for one day of insight and foresight. Get your ticket today!

Woowa Delivery Robots to Access Buildings and Ride Elevators Next Year

If you want to know what the future of robot delivery looks like, then take a look at what Woowa Brothers is doing in Korea. The Aju Business Daily has a story up today about how Woowa is creating new partnerships that will allow its robots to pass through a building’s security as well as take an elevator to travel between floors.

In August of this year, Woowa’s “Dilly” robots started making limited food deliveries to a multipurpose housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city. But in this scenario, when it arrives, the robot waits at the entrance of the complex and the resident who placed the order must come down to retrieve their items.

As Aju reports, Woowa has partnered with networking platform developer HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to make a Dilly’s delivery more direct. With HDC I-Controls, Woowa’s robot will be able to automatically get through a front door’s security system and enter the building. Once inside, the connection with Hyundai Elevator will allow the robot to automatically travel in between floors of a building. This functionality is expected to roll out next year.

While Aju didn’t mention how the robots navigate to a recipient’s front door, that seems doable either though GPS on a user’s phone or QR codes placed on doors.

On it’s face, this is a really cool idea. Not only could robots enter a building and take the elevator on its own, but food orders in the same building could be clustered so robots could make multiple deliveries with one trip.

But the bigger reason we’re highlighting this story is that it’s another example of automated systems starting to daisy chain with one another. We talked about this during our food robotics panel at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. In that talk, we outlined scenarios where something like a Picnic robot makes a pizza, a Bear Robotics Servi bot brings that pizza out to a delivery bot like Kiwi, which the brings it out directly to a person.

In Woowa’s case, the connections are more software related, but it’s still all about bringing more automation to the meal journey. You could see similar functionality coming to the U.S., especially at college dorms and apartment buildings. This type of automated travel path could also spur more delivery cubbies like Minnow’s for buildings without an elevator. A robot could place the order inside a temperature controlled locker for the person to pick up when they are ready.

The point is that we are just scratching the surface of what robotic meal delivery is capable of. These types of interplay between automated services will only increase making our robot-powered future seem not that far off.

Woowa Bros. Launches Robot Food Delivery in Korea

Woowa Brothers, which owns the popular Baedal Minjok food delivery service in Korea, announced yesterday that it started using robots for delivery on public streets just outside of Seoul.

Woowa’s “Dilly Drive” robots will have a very limited run at first, only making deliveries to Gwanggyo Alley Way, a multipurpose housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city.

The Dilly service can be used by any of the 1,100 residents of the housing complex, or the public at large. To place an order, customers use the Baemin mobile app and the robot will either arrive at the first floor of the Gwanggyo Alley Way, or to tables outfitted with special QR codes in the complex’s plaza.

The Dilly Drive robots sport six wheels, move at a speed between 4 – 5 kilometers per hour (roughly the speed of a person walking) and can carry roughly 6 lunch boxes. The self-driving Dilly Drives can detect and avoid objects, people, and pets, and the robots now come equipped with remote control, presumably so a human can take over should one get stuck or incapacitated.

According to the press release, this is the first public use of food delivery robots in Korea. Woowa had previously tested the Dilly robots at Konkuk University in a pilot program back in November 2019.

While this may be the first public use of delivery robots in Korea, chances are good that it won’t be the last. The global COVID-19 pandemic has sparked the acceleration of contactless methods of delivery. Robots like the Dilly Drive, as well as those from Starship and Kiwibot, remove at least one human from the delivery equation. Robots also bring the added benefits of being able to work long hours without a break and never getting sick.

With the launch of the Dilly Drive, I’m curious to see if Woowa Founder and CEO Kim Bong-Jin will follow up on an idea he had a couple years back. During a press interview back in July 2018, Bong-Jin expressed an interest in having robots not only deliver food but also take away recycling. As more people have ordered delivery during this pandemic quarantine, single-use plastics have become a bigger problem. If a delivery robot could drop off food in a recyclable/re-usable container and then pick it up on its next trip, that could really help put a dent in the waste created by restaurant delivery.

LG, Woowa Bros. and KIRIA to Develop Robot Waiters

Consumer electronics giant LG is teaming up with Woowa Bros and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement (KIRIA) to develop robot waiters for restaurants, The Korea Times reported over the weekend.

This deal expands a partnership formed between LG and Woowa earlier this year. According to the Times, the two companies have “joined a project chaired by KIRIA, a Daegu-based state-run agency that supervises Korea’s robot industry.”

LG is developing robots and artificial intelligence that can be used across Woowa Brothers’ food delivery and robot rental businesses. Last November, Woowa launched a program that rents out server robots to restaurants. The Times reports that Woowa currently has 85 robots operating in 68 restaurants across Korea.

The LG robots developed through this program will not carry the LG CLOi branding. In February of this year LG announced its CLOi server robot would be used by Korea restaurant chain CJ Foodville.

Robot servers are gaining new attention during this pandemic because they reduce human-to-human interaction. There are plenty of companies betting on a bright future for server robots. Bear Robotics, Keenon Robotics and PuduTech are all creating similar, autonomous plate carrying robots.

Restaurants are re-opening, but following strict guidelines while doing so, including reduced occupancy, socially distant table setups, temperature checks and masks worn by staff.

Whether or not restaurants can survive under these limitations or whether people will want to dine in at restaurants again in the near future remain to be seen. But a robot server could be a more appealing, contactless alternative for restaurants looking to keep whatever customers they have at ease.

LG and Woowa Bros. to Develop Food Delivery and Serving Robots

South Korean companies LG and Woowa Brothers announced today that they will work together on developing robots that deliver food to tables at restaurants as well as to your front door (hat tip to The Investor).

The companies didn’t provide many specifics, just saying that there were synergies between the two and they looked forward to making a better world where robots and humans coexist.

The move isn’t surprising given that both companies have made numerous robotic moves in parallel up to this point. Just earlier this month South Korean restaurant chain CJ Foodville started deploying LG’s CLoi ServeBots at its locations to serve food and shuttle empty dishes.

For its part Woowa Brothers, which operates Baedal Minjok, South Korea’s largest food delivery operation, launched a robot rental program for restaurants in November of last year. And last summer, Woowa partnered with UCLA to develop cooking robots. Woowa was acquired by Delivery Hero for $4 billion last December, but prior to that, Woowa’s CEO had talked openly about how delivery robots should be multi-taskers and do things like take away trash and recycling.

The announcement comes amid the backdrop of the deadly coronavirus. Cases in South Korea have spiked, and as the disease becomes a global pandemic, robots are one measure being taken to reduce human-to-human contact. As we saw early in the virus’ spread, a quarantined hotel in China used robots to serve food to stranded travelers. In fact, robots could wind up being instrumental in the contactless method of food delivery, if proper sterilization procedures can be put into place.

LG certainly isn’t alone in its food robot endeavors. Sony has a big vision for cooking robots and partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to research them. Sony also recently launched a dedicated artificial intelligence unit that would work on “gastronomy.”

All of this is to say that with the intense focus from companies like LG, Woowa, Sony and more, the world of food delivery and restaurant robots is being primed to undergo massive advancements in the coming years.

Woowa Brothers Partners with UCLA to Develop Cooking Robots

Woowa Brothers Corp., the company behind South Korea’s popular food delivery app Baedal Minjok, is partnering with UCLA to research and develop cooking robots, according to a story today in The Korea Times.

The Times writes, “Under the project name ‘Yori,’ Woowa Brothers will develop cooking robots that can perform various tasks, from placing orders and preparing meals, to bring an innovation to the dining culture.” As the article points out, the move with UCLA helps expand Woowa Brothers beyond food delivery.

But robots have been on the brain for Woowa Brothers for a while. In April of 2018, the company invested $2 million in Bear Robotics, which makes “Penny,” the robot that shuttles food and empty plates about on restaurant floors. And in December of last year, Woowa received $320 million in funding, some of which was going towards developing its autonomous delivery robot program.

Adding cooking robots to its arsenal would give Woowa Brothers a more full-stack solution and is in line with the broader, 360 degree view the company has about robots. In an interview last July, Kim Bong-jin, CEO and Founder of Woowa Brothers, talked about how food delivery robots could be more useful with less idle time. One idea Bong-jin floated was in addition to dropping off food, having a delivery robot take away a customer’s recycling.

Woowa Brothers is just the latest company to partner with a university for robotics research. Last year, Sony teamed up with Carnegie Mellon to develop food robots, and Nividia has a robotic kitchen lab set up with researchers from the University of Washington.

Food is a great application for robotics for a number of reasons. First, everyone eats, so there will always be a market for developing systems that help prepare, cook or deliver food faster. Second, food is oddly shaped, with varying sizes and degrees of fragility, making it difficult to work with. Overcoming the idiosyncrasies of food can make working with more uniform materials easier.

Bear Robotics’ Penny Clocks in at Pizza Hut in South Korea

Pizza Hut in South Korea today announced it is rolling out a new robotic employee at one of its Seoul restaurants. While the robot is called Dilly Plate there, Spoon readers might know it better as “Penny,” the self-driving dish busser robot from Bay Area startup Bear Robotics.

Dilly Plate/Penny is a squat, bowling pin-shaped robot with a flat surface that can shuttle food and empty plates around a restaurant (humans still need to load and unload it). Penny is being put to work in smaller restaurants in California such Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas and the chain restaurant Amici’s Pizza — but now it’s about to travel the world.

The Korean Herald reports that Dilly Plate’s engagement at the Seoul restaurant is a little more limited, with Pizza Hut “employing” the robot for just a two-week test run.

The Herald, however, credits Dilly Plate as being developed by Woowa Brothers Corp., not Bear Robotics. This could be because Woowa invested $2 million in Bear Robotics in April of this year, or it could just be an oversight (we sent a note to Bear Robotics for clarification). On Linkedin however, Bear Robotics Founder and CEO, John Ha proudly exclaimed “Bear Robotics in Pizza Hut in Seoul Korea!”

Regardless of who gets credit, the bigger story here is the relentless march of robots into our restaurant experience. They are becoming ubiquitous. Dilly Plate/Penny expedites front of house service, while robots like Flippy fry up burgers in the back (or chicken tenders at the ballpark). And in restaurants like Spyce Kitchen in Boston, robots do all the cooking.

But it’s not just here in the U.S. — robots are going global. In addition to Dilly Plate in Korea, Ekim has its pizza-making robot restaurant in Europe, Alibaba has its robots scurrying around Robot.he in Shanghai, and MontyCafe will make you a latte in Russia.

All this automation means that traditional human-powered labor in restaurants is going away, or at least transitioning into a different role. Robots like Penny were designed to let humans focus on more high-level tasks like customer interaction. However, what will that transformation look like once the majority of foodservice jobs are taken by the ‘bots (which might happen soon as they’re quickly getting more dexterous)?

Want to learn more? Make sure to get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit this October in Seattle, where you can catch Bear Robotics CEO John Ha speak about the future of food robots. See you there!

Woowa Brothers CEO: Delivery Robots Should Take Your Recycling Too

When we talk about delivery robots, it’s often a one-way transaction: a robot delivering food (or whatever) to a customer. But KimBong-jin, CEO and Founder of Korean company Woowa Brothers, thinks the convenience is two-way, with robots taking items like recycling away from the customer.

Woowa Brothers owns Baedal Minjok: the top food delivery app in Korea, where 7 in 10 people have used a food delivery app. In an interview with Korea JoonAng Daily, Bong-jin laid out a number of the benefits of using delivery robots including cheaper fees, increased security and the ability to take stuff away from a customer’s house. From that Q&A (emphasis ours):

I want to have robots deliver not only food but also food ingredients, products sold at convenience stores, medicine and even newspapers. On their way back from delivering, robots could pick up recyclable waste from customer’s houses and throw it away. If consumers no longer have to buy a large amount of products at once at a supermarket thanks to delivery robots, the capacity of refrigerators would also be reduced.

I had a bit of a “duh, of course!” moment when reading that. Rather than sending an empty robot back to home base or to the next restaurant, it should make itself useful throughout its entire trip. Taking out the trash, as it were, seems like a pretty good start.

There are obviously some issues with that: keeping the robot clean, having convenient locations to accept recycling, making sure people are not just dumping whatever they want to get rid of in the robots.

But all these problems can be addressed. It could reduce plastic waste by having re-usable food containers. This could be much like the glass milk bottles of old, an order for food delivery would have its own containers that would be returned with the next order.

Or, thinking more broadly, with grocery or package delivery, customers could return cardboard boxes or packaging back to their origin for re-use and recycling.

The point is that as we think about delivery robots hitting our streets, we should remember that their journey is not just one-way. Let’s put those returning robots to work!

Bear Robotics Receives $2M Investment from Woowa Brothers

Bear Robotics, which makes the restaurant robot, “Penny,” announced today that it has received a $2 million investment from South Korean food tech company, Woowa Brothers. ZDNet reports that the money is part of Bear’s seed round and comes in the form of convertible bonds. Bear Robotics had previously raised $3.8 million.

Bear created Penny, the bowling pin-shaped restaurant robot runner, which can autonomously shuttle food from the kitchen out to tables and bring dirty dishes back for cleaning.

Woowa runs Baedal Minjok, South Korea’s largest food delivery app. The company has developed its own delivery robot and is reportedly looking to expand its AI and robotics efforts.

Bear Robotics PennyBot demo

Bear Robotics is co-founded and run by ex-Googler John Ha, who used Penny at his restaurant, Kang Nam Tofu House, in Milpitas, CA. Ha told us previously that Penny was borne out of seeing inefficiencies and difficulties that come along with human restaurant workers.

Penny was built for front of house operations (so no burger flipping) and its functionality is currentlypretty limited. While it can navigate between people and tables, it still requires humans to load its table-top surface, transfer the food onto the tables, and place dirty dishes on back onto it. Penny, however, doesn’t tire out, take breaks or call in sick.

Bear plans on renting out Penny’s to restaurants in a labor-as-a-service business model, and had signed up the Bay Area-based Amici’s Pizza chain as a customer.

Robots and food are a hot topic right now. In addition to Flippy, the burger cooking robot, Little Caesars’ has patented its own pizza making robot, Sony and Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up for food + robot-related research, and who knows — maybe even Amazon’s reported robot will have some culinary skill.